Stephen F. Williams
Sad news from the D.C. Circuit: longtime D.C. Circuit federal judge Stephen F. Williams passed away on Friday after a prolonged battle with COVID-19. The 83-year-old jurist was admitted to the hospital in May, after becoming sick with the novel coronavirus.
Judge Williams was nominated to the federal bench by Ronald Reagan in 1986. He took senior status in 2001, but continued to manage a full case load until he was 80 years old and heard cases as recently as earlier this year. Judge Williams’s career on the bench is known for his expertise in law and economics and he heard a number of noteworthy cases during his time on the D.C. Circuit, as reported by the Washington Post:
Williams — whose father had been a well-known lawyer and former law clerk to William Howard Taft, who became Supreme Court chief justice after he was president — was a fierce advocate of the philosophy that free markets create free societies. He presided over a host of significant legal cases that touched on energy deregulation, gun control, the powers of independent prosecutors and the Civil Rights Act. He also served on the panel of judges who heard Microsoft’s antitrust appeal, finding that the software giant had abused its Windows monopoly but reversing a lower court’s order to break up the company.
Judge Williams was also known for his down-to-earth style — he’d frequently bike to work and take brown-bagged vegetarian lunches with him. Statements from various colleagues on the bench reveal a trusted jurist who will be missed:
“Truthfully, it breaks my heart. He was my closest colleague. He was my friend. We would have lunch occasionally and talk about everything in the world,” Judge Laurence H. Silberman said Saturday in an interview. “We teased each other because he thought I was too sympathetic to trade unions, and I thought he was too sympathetic to animals.”
Another colleague on the bench, Judge Merrick B. Garland, called him “the kindest of colleagues, eager to engage in vigorous intellectual debate in the most open-minded and non-personal way.”
“He was at heart the professor he had been before taking the bench,” Garland said in an email, “and it is no surprise that many of his superb law clerks have gone on to become professors themselves.”
The statement from the D.C. Circuit Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan:
Before his time on the D.C. Circuit, Williams was a law school professor at the University of Colorado. He also worked in military intelligence with the U.S. Army Reserve, was an attorney at the Biglaw firm of Debevoise & Plimpton, was an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, and a consultant to the Federal Trade Commission. He also wrote multiple books on Russian history.
Our thoughts go out to Judge Williams’s family, friends, and colleagues during this difficult time.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).